Thursday, August 13, 2015

Skyforge Block stat - Is it worth it? & Tanking stat discussion & Recommended Chapels

Sitting here with my first spare okki tablet trying to decide where to drop a second superfluous chapel.  The question on my mind is which tank stat is least valuable and thus most amenable to being replaced by an alternate chapel.  But that decision's not super interesting with regards to this post, here we're gonna look at Block specifically.

It's hard to find information on how all the tank stats work, but Block is especially nebulous.  At face value without doing any calculating, I actually assumed Block would be hella useful for tanking--it usually is in most MMOs and proc'd damage reduction is usually pretty high priority--so I was surprised to find a lot of people claiming that Block is worthless (tl;dr for below: it probably is indeed worthless).

But here's some theoretical math:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ttemNuGG8TlLqYEOLGcxK5PItUFaOroqWnnnNCkiPFQ/edit#gid=0
Edit: Should be fully viewable now and anyone should be able to edit the yellow boxes.  Let me know if you have any trouble with it.

Here's what we know:
-Block "occasionally" reduces damage
-Decreases "incoming damage" by a "certain" percent of Stamina

Here's what we don't know:
-How often "occasionally" is; ie the proc rate
-What specific percent of Stamina is applied

Here's some assumptions I'm making:
-The stat value of Block refers to the % of stamina by which damage is reduced, and that this value is a flat number (ie when blocking occurs with 15% Block you're reducing damage by a 0.15*Stamina flat amount)
-There's no other sources of straight up damage reduction (ie incoming damage is not modified at all)

Here's the variables involved:
-Proc rate; I wrote in samples for varying proc rates from 10% to 100% in 10% intervals
-Incoming damage magnitude; it's obvious right off the bat that fewer, larger hits make Block less worthwhile and conversely it's better suited to more frequent, smaller hits (basically, means there's more chances for Block to proc)

---

Now I set out to write this about Block to get a better idea how much of an impact it might be having but I decided to just go ahead and try to look at Shield Power, Adaptation, and Endurance as well--since knowing how Block works doesn't mean much without comparing it to the others.  Here's some notes based on these very rough calculations

-Shield Power: I'm assuming it modifies all incoming shields and not just personal sources
-Shield Power: Since the determinant of the usefulness of Shield Power is how many times a shield is applied, I modeled it as effective HP gained per minute--ie the shield being used as soon as the cooldown is available for Celestial Shield and Unstable Shield (including the Rain of Fire talent).  Note that with Paladin talents, Celestial Shield cooldown can be reduced if the shield is destroyed, which makes the eHP/min potentially higher in practice.  I don't have Alchemist unlocked to compare those shields unfortunately.  Knight shields are smaller and less consistent so I didn't really take the time to throw those in for now.
-Block vs Shield Power: Block needs a very high proc rate even in high frequency/low damage situations in order for it to be better, point for point, than Shield Power
-Adaptation: "Incoming damage is temporarily reduced if you take consistent hits."  Working assumption: Adaptation% damage reduction for subsequent hits beyond a short time period.
-Adaptation vs Block: At a constant proc rate (ie a situation where all incoming damage qualifies for Adaptation damage reduction), Adaptation seems to be comparable to Block at ~50% proc rate on a percent-by-percent basis
-Endurance: Assuming the % value is the damage reduction percent.
-Endurance vs Adaptation: On paper and in each stat's ideal situation, they appear to be the same value percent-by-percent, however one needs to consider that they are useful in opposite situations.  It's also worth considering that you can get Endurance in larger chunks via chapels than Adaptation.  Personally, I think it's more common to take larger amounts of damage, so I prefer Endurance when it's a choice between them.
-Nothing here takes healing into account, so there's probably some fudging there maybe.

AFAIK none of these stats are available from rings, so the real discussion here is chapel selection.  Based on all of the above, here's what I would recommend:

Province: First choice > Second choice
Dawn Plateau: Endurance > Block
Kesalia: Shield Power
Symerlis: Shield Power > Block
Ithanos Archipelago: Shield Power
Hallaghi Valley: Endurance > Adaptation
Fjord Kangher: Shield Power > Block
Thyrthon Plain: Endurance
Damon Wasteland: Adaptation > Regeneration

*Shield Power reportedly caps (soft or hard?) at 25%, so you may or may not want to pick one Block chapel over a Shield Power when you start upgrading to purple chapels.  I'm not aware of any other stat caps at this time.

Honestly, if you want to be prepared for all situations I'd recommend grabbing both first and second recommendations for each province to have maximum versatility (also, in the future we'll be able to activate multiple chapels in a province) but it's naturally up to you if you want to have DPS or support stats on backup first.

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